Bess in Winter

.
Another blast of cold weather, with a slight possibility of snow has me feeling cold. I love cold weather in all honesty, but I have found myself adding a layer here and there. It must be my aching bones. My niece gave me a wool challis stole for Christmas and it is close by for a blanketing effect when needed.

 Horst photograph

 How did the likes of Bess of Hardwick manage to stay warm?

 Aside from the wearing of fur, (at left)- as a young woman in heavy robes beautifully tipped in fur. Bess as Lady Cavendish, painted by a follower of Eworth, c. 1557. She wears fine jewelry & her fine clothes include a linen smock worked with  scarlet, and-( at r.) as the formidable Countess of Shroesbury in ermine, no less.

A favored color?

Bess always had a fire in her bedchamber at Hardwick hall and kept the room well insulated against draughts and winter chills. "Those large windows, which were so splendid architecturally,, made the house particularly cold and draughty in the winter, especially perched as it was on a hilltop."  (excerpted from Mary S Lovell's Bess of Hardwick)

Just imagine a Tudor morning and a driving snow without.

Hardwick Hall

photograph John Gay

Rather than the opulent silks and velvets which feature in the guestrooms, her bed was  a great scarlet-caparisoned tester bed hung with warm bed-curtains of finely woven scarlet wool. The window curtains were also scarlet. And a second pair of bedhangings were kept to be used over the scarlet ones in exceptionally cold weather; when these were all fastened round her bed, it must have been cosy to the point of stuffiness. (Mary Lovell)

I immediately thought of the sumptuous bed & room of David Hicks, though the heavy coverings of Bess's scarlets are hardly matched here, I think Hicks captures an out of time quality in this room.

Though I could easily envision Bess redecorating the David Hicks room by adding her fine handwork to tapestries all about the room-something like the ones she would have had a hand in. She was a master at the needle.

Appliquéed heraldic panel, Hardwick Hall, 16th C.

image from here

 

Appliquéed flowers and bands from a piece at Hardwick Hall, 16th C.

from here

Born in 1527, Bess learned her excellent skills and management of household from her mother and her aunt, creating a grand yet comfortable world  from the time of her marriage to Sir William Cavendish in 1547 until her death. As Lady of Chatsworth and from all of her subsequent titles, she employed embroiderers, seamstresses & lace makers to create the enormously detailed hangings of Hardwick Hall that can still be seen today.

Europa and the Bull
 (all needlework images from an Elizabethan Inheritance the Hardwick Hall Textiles)

an unknown woman by Marcus Gheeraerts 

 costume is modeled after "Virgo Persica" (the dress of Persian maiden) 

from Boissard's Habitus Variarum Orbis Gentium

Bess's aging bones evidently felt the cold a good deal, for in her chamber were three coverlets to hang across the two windows and the doors in winter months. Eight warm rugs protected her unshod feet, two great tapestries fifteen foot deep, 'with personages and forest work', hung against the walls. And in addition to the 'featherbed', bolster and pillows, there were twelve warm blankets.(Lovell)

from an Elizabethan Inheritance the Hardwick Hall Textiles

above & in detail, below

Typical (below) are the Hardwick Hall bedchambers (see National Trust photographs below) that Bess shunned in favor of her scarlet woolen saturated rooms.

Hardwick Hall
Early-eighteenth-century bed in the Green Velvet Room. ©NTPL/Nadia Mackenzie

Hardwick Hall
Bed from about 1740 in the Cut Velvet Bedroom. ©NTPL/Nadia Mackenzie

Bess died on February 13, 1608, probably age 80 & what a remarkable life. Sadly she would not have seen the spring beauty of Hardwick Hall but gazed on its winter blanket of snow. The scarlet wrapped haven against the cold left to be bathed in dower black.

'I assure You, there is No Lady in this Land that I better Love & Like.'

-Queen Elizabeth I about Bess of Hardwick

and I think Yes, to the scarlet.

Resources used for this post:

Bess of Hardwick Hall First Lady of Chatsworth / Empire Builder  Mary S. Lovell 

Emile de Bruijn of the National Trust here

An Elizabethan Inheritance: The Hardwick Hall Textiles, by Santina Levey

stop at  Janet Blyberg's JCB to read about Hardwick Hall here

photographs of Hardwick Hall here

find a grave photograph here

.

about Liotard, Laura, Mary, Emile, celebrity mythmaking

.
 & about  TREASURE HUNT National Trust Acquisitions

 This relatively new born blog-written by Emile de Bruijn is indeed the rarest of  treasure. About the HUNT Emile says: "National Trust curators are always on the look-out for works of art and other chattels that have ‘escaped’ from the historic houses in their care. I help to co-ordinate these ‘treasure hunts’, and in this blog I present our acquisitions in their historic context."

recently this came up-
Little Augury to Emile de Bruijn of Treasure Hunt:
(read Our Conversation here too- )
 Love this portrait and period,( referring to a portrait in the Treasure Hunt post). Lady Mary Wortley Montagu is on the top of my list of iconic women. There are several portraits of Lady Mary that depict this same Turkish style

(little augury referring to this)

 Lady Mary Wortley Montagu by Johnathan Richardson

"We travelers are in very hard circumstances.

If we say nothing but what has been said before us, 

we are dull and have observed nothing. 

If we tell anything new, 

we are laughed at as fabulous and romantic."

 lady mary wortley montagu

 Emile of Treasure Hunt in reply:

The artist Jean-Etienne Liotard also played a role in popularising Turkish dress. His ravishing pastel portrait of Laura Tarsi (early 1740s) has recently been acquired by the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge: http://www.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/gallery/recentacquisitionsdrawingsprints/gallery/16.html-

following Emile's link takes you to this-

Jean-Etienne Liotard's portrait of Laura Tarsi

 to which little augury replies:
Look at this image of MWM as compared to the Liotard  http://www.jamessmithnoelcollection.org/images/lady%20mary%20wortley%20montagu.jpg

 the link takes you here-

 the engraving states-

from an original miniature in possession (1844) of the Earl of Harrington

To which Emile replies:  
Yes this portrait was thought to depict Lady MWM in the past. However, according to the Fitzwilliam’s acquisition records, it has now been established that the sitter was a Greek girl living in Constantinople called Laura Tarsi. She was probably the mistress of John Manners, Marquess of Granby, who commissioned this portrait from Liotard when in Constantinople on the Grand Tour.
Lady MWM did know Granby, and of course she was famous for wearing Turkish dress, so that may have caused this portrait to become associated with her – an interesting example of celebrity myth-making.

Laura Tarsi-A star is Born!

image from The Fitzwilliam Museum here

watercolour on ivory

from the Estate of the 10th Duke of Rutland

This extraordinary Liotard painting never ceases to grab my attention. The painting evokes all of the intrigue of a period in the 18th century for exotic Turkish dress in portraiture. Liotard is the painter that exemplifies this best. Here- Liotard's sitter wears a deep green robe embellished with brocade bands of gold. The robe is lined in a printed fabric seen in the painting just inside the sleeves. The cerulean velvet gown is again trimmed in gold bands- lined in what appears to be a  stripe. Liotard's expertise with the brush tells the story  with great clarity. The  gold necklaces, drop earrings and large belt buckle were certainly authentic  pieces from Constantinople- Laura Tarsi wears an extravagant turban encrusted with jewels completes the costume.

below-another of the Liotard portraits of Laura Tarsi

 
Jean-Étienne Liotard (Geneva 1702-1789)

Presumed portrait of Laura Tarsi in Turkish dress

($638,500 in 2009 from Christie's-here)

from Christie's:
This previously unrecorded image and three other versions of it have traditionally been considered portraits of Laura Tarsi, a Greek woman thought to be the mistress of the Marques of Granby (1721-1770) when both were living in Constantinople in the 1740s... Although the identification of the sitter cannot be confirmed definitively, this type of portrait of a Western woman in exotic dress is one at which Liotard excelled and made popular while in Constantinople and after his return to Western Europe... The sitters in a number of Liotard's portraits are wearing variations of the same costume... One can imagine Liotard keeping these costumes in his studio for models and other sitters to wear, and the commissions could have been for specific portraits in turquerie style or of beautiful and exotic images in an Orientalist style.

I told you it would be a treasure hunt-
Go to Treasure Hunt and get caught up in Emile's de Bruijn exploration of recovering Britain's National Treasures.




more about Liotard from Christie's

Born to French parents in Geneva, Liotard was an extremely well-travelled artist whose portraits were highly sought-after throughout Europe and beyond. He trained as an enamel painter and miniaturist before continuing his training in Paris, under Jean-Baptiste Massé, miniature painter to Louis XV. In 1735 he travelled to Italy in the retinue of the French Ambassador, and three years later moved to Constantinople, where he established himself in the European community. During his four-year stay there, Liotard famously adopted Ottoman-style costume (for which, as a European, he would have required special dispensation) and grew a long beard. He retained both after leaving Turkey in 1742, and not surprisingly gained renown as the 'Turkish painter' in the many European capitals (including London) where he worked over the following decades. Many of his sitters, male and female, chose to be depicted in similarly exotic costume. Laura Tarsi's outfit epitomises the layered look and richly embroidered fabrics that enjoyed such a vogue among fashionable Europeans.
.